There is a beautiful account of the meeting between the Pure Land Patriarch T'an Luan and the famed translator/monk Bodhiruci. T'an Luan (488-554), seeking immortality, travelled about China obtaining teachings from various noted sages, including the Taoist master T'ao Hung-ching. Eventually (ca. 530) he met with the Indian Buddhist teacher Bodhiruci:

"T'an Luan opened the conversation by saying 'Is there anything in the Teaching of the Buddha which is superior to the methods for obtaining immortality found in this country's scriptures on the immortals?'

Bodhiruci spat on the ground and said, 'What are you saying? There is no comparison! Where on this earth can you find a method for immortality? Suppose that you can obtain youth in your old age, and never die: even having done that, you would still be rolling around in the Triple World!'

So he gave him the Meditation Sutra and said, 'These are the recipes of Amitabha Buddha: if you rely on his practices, you will be liberated from Samsara.'"I can imagine Bodhiruci commenting...'What are you saying? There is no comparison! Where on this earth can you find a method for immortality? Suppose that you can obtain youth by being a frozen popsicle, and never die: even having done that, you would still be rolling around in the Triple World!'

I was recently reading about people preserving their body at cryogenic temperatures, in the hope that in the future that they can perhaps be re-animated

Since, the person is already dead, he/she would have already had rebirth(s).

Assuming, that in the future that it is possible to re-animate the body - I was just wondering "who" the reanimated person will be

Any thoughts !

V

My thoughts are that for this to work, the person would have to be put into suspended animation before they actually died. But I think this is always done after the person is medically dead?

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true of false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

I was recently reading about people preserving their body at cryogenic temperatures, in the hope that in the future that they can perhaps be re-animated

Since, the person is already dead, he/she would have already had rebirth(s).

Assuming, that in the future that it is possible to re-animate the body - I was just wondering "who" the reanimated person will be

Any thoughts !

V

Buddhist rebirth is not Hindu reincarnation. The ' who ' would be a collection of changing skandhas/kandhas..just as it was before death. Not a soul. It would simply be a new set of conditions causing the arising of skandhas/kandhas.

Simon E. wrote:Buddhist rebirth is not Hindu reincarnation. The ' who ' would be a collection of changing skandhas/kandhas..just as it was before death. Not a soul. It would simply be a new set of conditions causing the arising of skandhas/kandhas.

This explanation would allow for multiple 'rebirths' of a single individual, especially if that individual were to die multiple times.

I'm no expert in medicine or biology, however, as I've heard, frozen dead bodies can never be reanimated because by freezing the cells they are practically destroyed (just as freezing water can break the bottle).

"There is no such thing as the real mind. Ridding yourself of delusion: that's the real mind."(Sheng-yen: Getting the Buddha Mind, p 73)

pueraeternus wrote:My thoughts are that for this to work, the person would have to be put into suspended animation before they actually died. But I think this is always done after the person is medically dead?

Well.. People say that the neural connections in the Brain remain intact, a few hours after the clinical death. Since, Neural connections allegedly preserve our identity (i.e Memories etc. ), the believe some how in the future there will be technology to either retrieve the identity from the intact brain to a machine or whatever (some Cryonic facilities store only the severed head ! ) or re-animate the "frozen" body itself.

astus wrote:I'm no expert in medicine or biology, however, as I've heard, frozen dead bodies can never be reanimated because by freezing the cells they are practically destroyed (just as freezing water can break the bottle).

They seem to inject the body with some chemical fluid into the body to avoid this.

Well.. People say that the neural connections in the Brain remain intact, a few hours after the clinical death. Since, Neural connections allegedly preserve our identity (i.e Memories etc. ), the believe some how in the future there will be technology to either retrieve the identity from the intact brain to a machine or whatever (some Cryonic facilities store only the severed head ! ) or re-animate the "frozen" body itself.

Rupert Sheldrake has some innovative ideas backed up with his own experiments about memories being stored outside the brain, which likewise helps to explain the mechanism behind telepathy which statistically shouldn't happen as often as it does.

I was recently reading about people preserving their body at cryogenic temperatures, in the hope that in the future that they can perhaps be re-animated

Since, the person is already dead, he/she would have already had rebirth(s).

Assuming, that in the future that it is possible to re-animate the body - I was just wondering "who" the reanimated person will be

Any thoughts !

V

Buddhist rebirth is not Hindu reincarnation. The ' who ' would be a collection of changing skandhas/kandhas..just as it was before death. Not a soul. It would simply be a new set of conditions causing the arising of skandhas/kandhas.

The interesting part is that the "set of conditions causing the arising of skandhas/kandhas" would be cryogenically suspended, with the body. What can be inferrrrrrrred from that?

But they wouldn't. How could you say they would? A causal factor in the chain of causation, might be an intention - in fact, often is. And an intention is not a physical thing, amy more than a thought. You cannot point to anything anywhere in the objective realm known to sciences and say 'there is an intention'. Intentions are only ever associated with subjects, and the subject is not this or that. Do you think if a body was in suspended animation, and came to again, the subject would be saying 'now, where was I...'

Learn to do good, refrain from evil, purify the mind ~ this is the teaching of the Buddhas

If the future and the past all exist as a result of the present, there's no reason why a cryopsycle would acquire a rebirth if it is going to be reanimated at some point, but if it would never get reanimated then it would perhaps acquire a rebirth, see?

Disclaimer: If I have posted about something, then I obviously have no idea what I am talking about!

jeeprs wrote:Do you think if a body was in suspended animation, and came to again, the subject would be saying 'now, where was I...'

Depends on the process (could be instantaneous?), and I guess whether or not the subject knew that they were going to be put into suspended animation. Regarding causal factors, there would be no cause for the subject to be any different than they were before suspension. Their intents and purposes would be the same.

vinodh wrote:I was recently reading about people preserving their body at cryogenic temperatures, in the hope that in the future that they can perhaps be re-animated Since, the person is already dead, he/she would have already had rebirth(s). Assuming, that in the future that it is possible to re-animate the body - I was just wondering "who" the reanimated person will be

It is a good topic, but there is a problem in the question, because it approaches the issue as though there is a self which lives, dies, is frozen, is thawed out, is reborn, and so on, rather than looking at the whole thing as a collection of concurrent conditions (what other responses have alluded to).

What we can ask, is if the body and physical brain dies, and is later thawed out and brought back to life, and some memory is retained, then what is the nature of that memory?

Actually, a not-so-drastic version of this question is brought up in the book, On Buddha Essence A Commentary on Rangjung Dorje's Treastise by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche

only there, the question has to do with memeory returning after sleep, or after being in a coma....

Profile Picture: "The Foaming Monk"The Chinese characters are Fo (buddha) and Ming (bright). The image is of a student of Buddhism, who, imagining himself to be a monk, and not understanding the true meaning of the words takes the sound of the words literally. Likewise, People on web forums sometime seem to be foaming at the mouth. Original painting by P.Volker /used by permission.